Judicial Wisdom

[Siren 0]

A Japanese court recently ruled against an application to recognise a child born from artificial insemination (frozen sperm from his/her natural father who died) on the ground that it is not recognised by Japanese law/public policy.

 

Apparently the decision was based on a provision of the Civil Code (民法) which states that the law does not recognise a child born from a parent who has died for more than 300 days!

[slow 0]

I couldn't understand why she wanted a baby after her husband died? That's very strange for me.

[Siren 0]

Same here. One would have thought the process is much more desirable than the result.

[nekobi 0]

whaddya mean they dont recognize the child? do they refuse to believe he/she exists?? or just believe they came magically from one parent?

[Ocean11 0]

The law doesn't recognize it is as being the child of the father, because the law was written before scientific miracles existed. The effect of this is that the birth-certificate type thing doesn't specify a father, which has other legal implications.

 

A further factor here is that there's a bit of paper that the 'father' signed saying that he understood that his sperm would be disposed of when he died. So this can be taken as 'proof' that he didn't want his sperm to be used after his death.

 

It's post mortem rape if you ask me.

[Siren 0]

 

But seriously

 

 Quote:

a bit of paper that the 'father' signed saying that he understood that his sperm would be disposed of when he died

I can understand why someone would want to make a will so that he has certain control over how his belongings would be taken care of. But sperm?!! Did he suspect something before he died e.g. his 'wife' is bound to misuse it?

[Ocean11 0]

I think it was more in the nature of small print buried in some agreement with the sperm freezers. Obviously the doctors who impregnated the woman didn't take much notice of it...